Gastrophilia
by apeljohn
Summary: In "Goblet of Fire", Harry sees a small child performing an advanced charm on a slug. Whatever happened to that kid? One-shot.


I will never forgive my parents' attempts to hobble my genius with their plebeian minds. The shame they are no doubt feeling at having raised the next Dark Lord is nothing more than they deserve.

It should have been obvious from an early age that I was a prodigy. As a five-year-old child, not only could I cast a powerful Engorgement Charm, but I could do it _wordlessly_, simply by prodding my target with the tip of a wand. And did I get any support from them? Did I hell.

My favourite target, of course, was Slug. My first friend. I had stumbled across the creature in the garden one day, and was shocked to discover that he could speak to me. Yes, I am a Pulmomouth. Now that the Ministry has discovered my skill, I am sure it will become as reviled as Parselmouth. Closed-minded fools.

Slug taught me so much about life. How to find the juiciest leaves. Where to hide from marauding birds. Why salt was evil. OK, so admittedly not all of it was relevant to life as a human, but it's the thought that counts. And then my mother confiscated the wand I was using and trod on him. Requiescat in pace, Slug.

But did this early setback stop me? No, it did not! And in a way my mother did me a favour in not letting me use my father's wand. By age six I was casting wandlessly too.

My parents discovered this the first time they tried to ground me, at age eight, for some trivial infraction against the status quo that I cannot now even remember. Locking me in my room proved to be a mistake on their part. Twenty foot of black slug smashed its way through the wall of my bedroom as my mother screamed downstairs. I rode away on its back in triumph. They never grounded me again.

My skills only grew as the years passed. In my second year at Hogwarts, I was brutally bullied by two of my fellow Slytherins. Until, that is, they both vanished without a trace, leaving behind only a trail of silvery mucous. Headmistress McGonagall never found out who was to blame, at the time. I'm sure she has a good idea now.

Skip forward a few years. When I was twenty, in the wake of a particularly daring attack on Gringotts, the Aurors finally caught up with me. In retrospect it was a mistake to stop and chat to a cute periwinkle snail I met on the way out. The Aurors had my house surrounded, anti-Apparition and -Portkey wards up, and were demanding I come out with my tentacles above my head.

Only the intervention of my noble steed Horatio saved me. The heroic leopard slug charged directly at the Aurors, shielding me from a flurry of curses with his sixteen-foot body and giving me time to slip out the back while they were distracted. He died under several tons of conjured salt. He will be sorely missed.

Horatio's death did not go unavenged. You are no doubt aware of the retaliatory attack I launched on the ministry itself. Of the swarms of quick-moving field slugs that rampaged through the lobby, driving visitors out and trapping the employees of that corrupt institution inside. Of the brutal garden slugs that smashed most of the defence, leaving only a core of resistance around the Minister himself.

And, finally, of the enormous black slug, three stories high, that hit the Ministry like an enraged wrecking ball. Flora was my secret weapon. She broke through walls like they were made of paper, leaving nothing but a trail of slimy wreckage behind her as she drove through to the Minister's office.

The final confrontation can only be described as epic. On the one hand, thirty frantic and highly-skilled Aurors. On the other, the largest gastropod the world has ever seen. Curses flew, impacting harmlessly against the thick skin of my champion as she advanced implacably through the hail of hexes. She reached the cowering Minister and reared above him, ready to crush him with her giant body.

Until, as her head came down for the final attack, an Auror managed to cast a blasting curse down Flora's throat. The resulting explosion covered a large part of London in slug.

The fools at the Ministry all think I'm dead, buried under a swimming pool's worth of invertebrate intestines. It's true that I had a few sticky moments (so to speak) trying to get out undetected, not to mention uncrushed.

Even once I was free, it took a week of showers to get the smell out of my skin, followed by a year of psychotherapy to conquer my newfound phobia of all things slimey. But now I'm happily living somewhere that… well, let's just say the climate is far more agreeable. There's not a slug or snail for miles.

Looking back, I don't know what I saw in them in the first place. Even without the phobia, they seem so soft, slow and smelly. No proper mandibles, no armour plating. Nothing to really interest the aspiring Dark Lord.

Now, _woodlice_, on the other hand…

* * *

Author's note: I wasn't drunk when I wrote this. Honest. I _was_ sleep-deprived, but that's not really an acceptable excuse.

If you enjoyed this story then you might like my other one-shot Gazing Towards Olympus. Completely different subject - Greek mythology rather than HP - but similar style. Both stories emerged fully formed from my apparently rather twisted hindbrain.

Latin snippets:

Gastropoda = the class of slugs and snails

Pulmonata = the "informal group" of air-breathing slugs and snails (not a proper taxonomic group since they share the same common ancestor as water-living gastropods)

Requiescat in pace = rest in peace


End file.
